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Automaton
Many colonies and worlds lack the teeming mass of the lower classes to tax and distribute for basic and necessary tasks, like menial labor. The most developed worlds have the problem that too much of the population is aged and whose physical condition may not be suitable or safe for such tasks or the circumstances they take place in. To solve these various problems, many races have turned to artificial robots in large numbers to man the factories, do construction work, mining work, or risky and dangerous work. Automaton is defined as a non-sapient machine designed to perform these tasks. Alternatives, however, do exist, such as Genejacks, which are lifeforms genetically modified and cloned for the same purposes. History The earliest ancestors of automatons can be seen in industrial or post-industrial factories. In these days, semi-automatization of factories became possible, with machines doing the majority of the work. Workers were still required for quality assurance and maintenance of these machines, or things that required a certain level of dexterity or intelligence not available to the machines. These working positions gave the uneducated masses that dominated these industrial societies a job, but these jobs were unreliable. Such workers were easy to replace and expendable, and so working conditions were often unsanitary and dangerous. As post-industrial societies implemented rules and standards for businesses and established standards for their treatment in response to the workers' unions which formed, promising these very things, these jobs became more and more skill-based, many such workers being craftsmen or artisans in their own right. This naturally reduced productivity and profit margin for factories, while advancing technology made automated machines more and more advanced and independent. It was not long before attempts were made to replace the demanding workers with more compliant and contented robots, termed automatons. Eventually, success caused uproar, many losing their jobs due to being 'obsolete'. But factories benefitted from it - able to run all day and all night, without having to light their rooms or give their employees lunches and breaks or even pay them at all. The automatons were programmed to love what they were doing and enjoy nothing else, their work being payment enough. The only drawback, however, was that new factories were needed to produce more automatons. Eventually, these factories would be staffed by the automatons themselves, an eerie cycle of self-replication. It also created floods of hundreds of thousands of employed, who could no longer provide for themselves or their families (as much as these low-paying jobs could). Governments were eventually forced (or, rather, compelled) to provide compensation to these workers, which was satisfactory for most. This process occurred on many worlds, including Earth, but the process there was special due to human reproductive tendencies. With an increasing majority of the world population getting older and older and people having less and less children, the ensuing population stagnation and relatively small numbers of young, fit people lead to the rapid development of Automatons. But then it also lead to Anthrosons, who could tend to the oldest (and youngest) sectors of society, giving the adolescents and young adults time and ability to pursue interests and study. The Anthrosons, who were sentient, eventually rebelled in the Anthroson Rebellion. Some worlds found alternatives to automatons, and due to various factors or circumstances, were influenced to use Genejacks instead. These, however, have moral and ethical concerns attached to them. Category:Technology